Governmental Administration and Regulation

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The Government Administration and Regulation curriculum offers LL.M. candidates more than 30 courses related to government law, as well as field placements and internships in government law offices at the federal, state and local levels, including legislative and executive agencies.

A significant number of full-time faculty at Albany Law have previous public sector employment backgrounds, and adjunct faculty members and lecturers serve as lawmakers and policymakers.

Albany Law School is located in the heart of state government and is surrounded by more than 100 units of local government. It is also home to the oldest law school-based research center focusing on the intersection of law and public policy—the Governm​ent Law Center (GLC)—which works with state and local governments, as well as a host of national non-profit organizations.

At the GLC, students work with faculty and government leaders on cutting-edge law and policy issues, and may participate on the Government Law and Policy Journal — a biannual publication of the New York State Bar Association's Committee on Attorneys in Public Service — and Footnotes, the quarterly newsletter of the County Attorneys Association of the State of New York.

Up to three of 24 credits may be awarded for a placement approved by the faculty advisor. Students may elect to do a research and writing project under faculty supervision for up to six credits. Students may also choose to concentrate their general government LL.M. program in one of the following areas:

administrative law and process;

business and financial regulation;

civil and constitutional rights;

community development;

environmental law and policy;

intellectual property and information policy;

and labor and employment law.

Should students choose to concentrate, they are required to complete more than half of their credits in courses relevant to the concentration, as agreed in writing with their faculty advisors.

Courses

Examines fundamental and practical issues of federal and New York administrative law. Deals with the scope of power of administrative agencies and the relationship of such agencies to other branches of government. ​​​

​Refers to a collection of statutory and common law recognized causes of action that arise out of business competition. Surveys these causes of action and analyzes them in the context of providing a source of protection to a business which is subject to potential economic harm from competitors, employees, suppliers, and others. Coverage will include false advertising, business defamation and disparagement, interference with contractual and prospective business relationships, misappropriation of trade values such as ideas, trade secrets, publicity rights, and mispresentation. Prohibitions against unfair and deceptive practices under the Federal Trade Commission Act will also be covered. Trademark issues fall outside the coverage of this course. Not open to students who have taken Unfair Trade Practices.

The course will explore the issues concerning protection of intellectual creativity under the United States copyright laws; we will consider such matters as the nature of copyright, the statutory scheme, the kinds of works subject to copyright, and the extent of protection afforded those works. The grade will be based on performance on an end of semester examination.

This course is designed to familiarize students with the matrix of legal protections available to employees and employers from the hiring process to the termination of the employment relationship. It encourages students to examine common law and statutory rights of the parties while considering policy implications of the employment law system. The substantive areas to be covered include hiring/firing, wages, hours, and benefits, conditions of employment, employment security, and occupational health and safety. Unlike labor law which can be roughly organized around one federal statute (National Labor Relations Act), employment law is found in hundreds of separate cases and statutes.

​Focuses on developing general analytical framework for understanding environmental law, including development of common law, with emphasis on statutory and regulatory techniques for pollution control.

Uses the Clean Water Act as basis for detailed consideration of a "command and control" regulatory program. Considers various types of regulatory enforcement, including civil actions, administrative and criminal enforcement, and citizen suits.

Explores the foundational principles and doctrines governing the legal and political relationship between the United States, the states, and Indian tribes. Examines the history of federal Indian law and policy, tribal property rights, congressional plenary power, the trust doctrine, tribal sovereignty, and jurisdiction in Indian Country. Focuses on current issues in Indian Law, including gaming, reservation economic development, fishing and hunting rights, cultural resource protection, and tribal rights in natural resources.

​Covers ethical issues faced by members of the legislative, executive, and judicial brances of government at the federal, state and local levels. Covers special ethical responsibilities of attorneys in government service and the ethical obligations of government employees who are not attorneys.

​Provides an introduction to immigration and naturalization policies in the United States. Considers constitutional, statutory, and regulatory authorities confronting individuals and society. Students learn to navigate the complex regulatory framework to resolve basic immigration problems.

​Examines the judicial role. Focuses on creation and development of case law, theoretical and practical restraints on judges, and competing ideas regarding the nature of the judicial role in a constitutional democracy.

​This seminar considers the relationship between law, justice, and morality. Questions considered include: what is law? What are legal rules? What are rights? What is the relation of law to justice in the modern regulatory state? Readings include historical material (e.g., ancient Greek and Roman writers) through to contemporary legal theory (e.g., law and economics, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, and postmodernism). Students apply these perspectives to particular problems of law and policy in a research paper. The paper may be used to satisfy the upper year writing requirement.

​Analyzes use of arbitration to resolve both private and public sector labor disputes. Covers contract interpretation, disciplinary arbitration, and strategies and techniques in presenting an arbitration case.

​Examines legal techniques for public regulation of the use of land. Casebook has a national focus, but additional focus is placed on the New York planning and zoning enabling statutes, which were extensively revised in the 1990s.

​Examines principal issues in patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, and software licensing. Topics include standard terms and conditions of a technology license, negotiating royalty rates, and the impact of licensing on development and/or commercialization of technology.

​Examines the major bodies of United States law available for protecting intellectual property rights in inventions and discoveries. The majority of the course is devoted to studying patent law, including the patenting process, patent validity requirements, patent infringement, and the nature of rights secured by a patent. The course also covers trade secret law, including trade secret-eligible information, trade secret requirements, and the rights secured by a trade secret. The course concludes with an examination of the relationship between, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of, patent and trade secret law for protecting intellectual property rights.

Studies registration and prospectus requirements and exemptions for public and private offerings and sales of securities; regulation of securities transactions; regulation of corporate transactions such as mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, and tender offers; regulation of securities broker-dealers, exchanges and associations; and civil liabilities under the federal securities statutes.

Introduces structure, powers, and functioning of local governments and their interaction with the state. Topics include constitutional nature of local governments, incorporation, annexation, home rule, special districts and authorities, real property assessment and taxation, public access to information and meetings, state and local finance, and land use controls.

This course examines the legal foundation for states and local governments to incur debt (municipal securities) and finance infrastructure. It reviews the federal law regulating the sale of municipal securities and disclosure requirements for investors, and federal law which permits interest on municipal securities to be tax-exempt. These fundamentals are examined through various financing structures employed by Wall Street investment bankers, together with case law and think-tank policy which guide the development of the modern municipal securities marketplace.​

​Examines principal issues in patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, and software licensing. Topics include standard terms and conditions of a technology license, negotiating royalty rates, and the impact of licensing on development and/or commercialization of technology.

The course deals with the creation, enforcement, and limitation of trademark rights, including the impact of technological change (such as the use of the internet) on traditional concepts, and related unfair competition issues. The grade will be based on performance on an end of semester examination. ​